The Ten Boom Summary

One sunny day in January 1937 in Haarlem, Holland, the ten Boom celebrates the one-hundredth year of their in-home watch shop together with most of the town. The three family members who live in the tiny house, father ten Boom and his daughters Betsie and Corrie, prepare for the busy day after sharing breakfast and devotions with their three employees, Hans the apprentice, Toos the bookkeeper and Christoffels the repairman. This family shares a deep love for each other, devotion to their Christian faith and warm, generous hearts for the whole community. The party mood dampens as people discuss the threat of Hitler his campaign of German expansion and Holland’s role amidst the larger powers of Europe. Finally, Corrie’s brother Willem joins the gathering with a young Jewish man, Herr Gutlieber, who escaped from Munich after some teenagers waylaid him and set fire to his beard. The

Corrie, who is battling influenza, and thirty-four others are taken first to the prison in Haarlem and then to Gestapo headquarters in the Hague. Six people remain safely hidden in the hiding place, although the Gestapo threatens to starve them out. The Beje group is sent to Scheveningen Prison, although everyone but Corrie, Betsie and Father are later released. After ten days at Scheveningen, Father is taken to a hospital where he dies. Corrie knows none of this, however, because she is in solitary confinement. She struggles with prison boredom, but the four gospels, which a nurse in the doctor’s office had given her, help her survive. Gradually, Corrie regains her strength enough to sit through her hearings with Lieutenant Rahms. Corrie shares the gospel with Rahms and tells him that there is a way out of the darkness he is in. After four months in prison, Corrie sees her family at the reading of her father’s will. Although Willem is weak and jaundiced, he makes Corrie feel safe for a little